Hunted: The Demon’s Forge for XBox 360 is a highly anticipated game just released by inXile. The game is a co-op action game with a vast array of unique features. The game, unfortunately, comes up very short of expectations because of so many little details done wrong that detract from the experience. There are a myriad of other issues that force us to think the game was printed unfinished and rushed to market.

The game has a nice idea at its core – combine some fantasy RPG elements with some hack-n-slash elements and you essentially get the concept for HDF. Players have two characters to choose from, with the ability to control either E’tara, who is an expert with ranged weapons, or Caddoc, who excels in melee combat. Each character will have plenty of powerful weapons to acquire and choose from throughout the game in addition to a range of powerful spells and defensive techniques.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge

The world of Kala Moore, the setting for Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is a visual delight and rife with opportunities to play and explore. Gamers will battle through ruins, towns, and dungeons, and the game even offers a great editor that allows players the ability to design, create, and share their own dungeons as well. Unlike many games, players can choose whether they want to enjoy a melee fighting style or to play defensively, using spells and avoidance techniques to make it through the game. Player abilities even allow them to perform actions to make their partners more powerful in the game as well.

For those of you that enjoy a good loot parade, the game falls short once again. There are plenty of weapons and armor to be found but most of the time you find useless stuff that is never used by your character. There’s no DPS stat on the weapons to give a nice apples-to-apples comparison of what you find. Picking up items is a bit awkward since you have just walk over some items but click on others in order to pick it up.

Kala Moor is a world filled with mystery and possibility, and players will have a great time exploring all that is on offer. There are numerous puzzles that players will need to figure out together in order to advance, and the dark overall theme of the game presents a fairly unique gameplay experience. The look and feel of the game is designed to appeal to players who enjoy similar titles, but before you rush out and buy a copy, you may want to keep in mind the game’s downsides as well. The run mechanism is extremely weird that does a bizarre screen shake that really is a bad attempt at recreating a Gears of War experience. Also, when fighting bosses, this really comes into play making the fighting/running interaction awkward and overtly un-fun and the camera angles and movement that take over are fairly frustrating to experience.

Despite being a co-op game, there is no headset compatibility. Many of the game’s earliest players have also complained that the sound quality is poor and that the story itself is a bit generic. The attempt by inXile to combine dungeon crawling gameplay with other popular formats has garnered mixed reviews at best, and it seems that people either love this game or hate it. Ultimately, it is a fun game for playing around with a friend, but not necessarily one that you must add to your collection immediately. You may wish to rent it first or to wait for a used copy.

Sadly, what looked like a really cool game from some killer screenshots came up short. Hunted: The Demon’s Forge has some really nice elements to it but comes across as a seriously rushed-to-market title that a few patches might make into a serviceable game.